It’s one thing to be a firebrand senator who represents a rootin’, tootin’ state that prides itself on independence and brashness. It’s another thing entirely to vie for the nation’s top office and represent the interests of a vast and varied array of people. The president of the United States does not serve one single issue or one small group of people. He or she serves and represents the nation.

Sen. Ted Cruz is about to get a cold dose of reality as he competes for the hearts and minds of the nation’s Republicans in hopes of winning their presidential-nomination vote. Just among Republicans, the political alignment and interests are wide and varied. Only a relatively small percentage of Republicans support the tea party and share the extreme views of Cruz and his base.

Cruz is going to have to appeal to a broader range of Republicans if he wants to avoid having his candidacy turn into a short-lived national joke. I don’t doubt his ability to raise funds for a serious run. But he will have to do more. He’s going to have to learn how to listen. And he can no longer rely on criticism of mainstream Republicans and all Democrats as his political platform. Criticism sounds great, especially on the Senate floor and in campaign stops. But when voters are choosing their president, they look for someone with solutions, not just complaints. Continue reading →

The ongoing legislative standoff on Capitol Hill over Sen. John Cornyn’s sex-trafficking bill should never have devolved into an argument about federal funding of abortions. If Cornyn cared enough about the success of his legislation — and I know he does because he’s talked repeatedly to our editorial board about it — then he would never have allowed the poison pill of a Hyde Amendment reference to be inserted into it.

The Hyde Amendment denies the use of federal funds (primarily for recipients of Medicaid and federal health insurance) for abortions except in the case of rape, incest or when the mother’s life is in danger. Illegal human trafficking was never meant to be a target of this provision.

What no one on Capitol Hill — Democrat or Republican — appears to dispute is that all forms of human trafficking, but especially sex trafficking, is wrong and must be punished through strong federal enforcement measures. Cornyn’s bill should have sailed through. Continue reading →

The New York Times reported that Hillary Clinton may have violated the law by using a personal email account for official business at the State Department.

But this wretched incident is so Clintonesque. The surreal drama
again reveals the Clinton presidency’s fatal flaw: the political instinct to embrace spin and ambiguity until confronted. After eight years of hairsplitting, it is impossible to imagine anything but the worst intentions. The presidency deserved better.

I wrote those words in a satirical column as the Clintons were leaving the White House, The piece, titled “Moving can be so nerve-racking, ” touched on their “rules are made to be broken” tendencies when furniture and other things that should have been left at the White House ended up on the moving van. I re-read that piece today, and the conclusion seems just as fresh now, in light of the Hillary Clinton email fiasco reported in the New York Times. (The full column is at the end of the extended portion of this post).

I don’t whether there are any smoking guns, but the way the former Secretary of State handled her accounts makes it impossible to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, speaks during a joint meeting of Congress in the House Chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, March 3, 2015. Netanyahu said he had no political motives in appearing before the U.S. Congress and that the U.S. and Israel share "a common destiny."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeals to an American audience so strongly, particularly among conservatives, because he looks like a white American and talks like one. It would be easy to confuse his speech today for a State of the Union address. Netanyahu stands defiantly against a region that increasingly has an image for bloody brutality and a desire to wipe Jews off the face of the planet.

So when he stands before Congress and delivers a powerful speech outlining why the United States must not let the radicals prevail, of course he’s going to get a rousing applause. I applaud his message. It was a great speech. But I remain convinced that this was a political ploy designed to bolster his poll ratings two weeks ahead of Israeli elections.

That said, he made some very strong points, the most important being that the nations negotiating a nuclear agreement with Iran need to be tougher and demand greater concessions. Given the secrecy of the negotiations, we will not know anytime soon whether Netanyahu cherry-picked details from the briefings he has received in order to emphasize only the negative points. Let’s assume he did. That doesn’t make his speech any less impressive. But we still need to hear the other side.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu departs following his address to a joint session of the US Congress on March 3, 2015 at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. Netanyahu was invited by House Speaker John Boehner to address Congress without informing the White House.

It’s amazing the kinds of nutcases they’ll allow to spout their views on radio these days. Extremist right-wing radio talk-show host Andrea Shea King believes that the legislators who are not attending Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before Congress today should be hung in front of the Capitol. She specifically believes the punishment should be imposed on black member of Congress.

I wonder what punishment she recommends for the Jewish members of Congress who also are declining to attend. Perhaps she could draw from her Hitler Reader, as she did from her KKK Big Book of Black History, to come up with adequately offensive methods. Judging from some of the online comments I’ve seen from right wingers in blind support of Netanyahu, regardless of what he says, it worries me that Andrea Shea King isn’t the only one out there espousing these views.

Immigrants attend a press conference for families facing deportation on November 20, 2014 in Newark, New Jersey. They called on President Obama to legalize a broad spectrum of illegal immigrants, ahead of his scheduled speech. The immigrants proactively presented papers for deferred action for deportation proceedings at the U.S. Immigration and Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), office at Newark's Federal Building.

Let’s say the Texas court challenge to President Obama’s executive order on immigration is successful, and he is forced to permanently cancel plans to relieve up to 5 million immigrants from the threat of deportation. What next?

Well, after Republicans recover from their night of celebratory hard partying, we will still have something like 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country, including millions of young people who were brought here as children. It’s pretty clear from the angry GOP reactions to Obama’s plan — including the ongoing threat to restrict funding for the Department of Homeland Security — that Republicans do not want any unilateral presidential action that might allow anyone to remain in this country if they don’t have the proper papers.

So if the president cannot do this, who will? Seems like the ball is now in the court of the Republican-controlled House and Senate. No matter which party controls the House and Senate, our elected leaders on Capitol Hill can’t seem to come to grips with the fact that, even if we lined up every single bus and train in the country and loaded them on board, we would not be able to deport them all. (The 11 million undocumented migrants, that is, not members of Congress.)

Ask anyone you like, including firebrand anti-immigrant politicians like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, whether mass deportation is the answer, and they will either change the subject, or Continue reading →

Depending on your political persuasion, there’s either a delicious irony or horrifying absurdity to the GOP’s threat to halt funding for the Department of Homeland Security. The 240,000-employee, 22-agency department has been targeted for punishment as Republican members of Congress look for ways to reverse President Barack Obama’s plan to exempt an estimated 4 million to 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation. Thousands of undocumented migrants are eligible to begin applying for the exemption on Wednesday under Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

For Democrats, the delicious irony is rooted in which agencies would be shut down and which would keep going if the funding squabble continues beyond the Feb. 27 deadline. The E-Verify program, an identity-verification database designed to prevent undocumented migrants from getting jobs with participating employers, would be shut down by the funding cuts. That program is particularly popular among law-and-order Republicans.

The horrifying absurdity, mainly from the GOP point of view, will come in the realization that the true target of these cuts – the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency that would implement DACA – would continue operating. That program is funded mainly by the fees paid by users, instead of by budgetary outlays approved by Congress. So the one thing Republicans are adamant about shutting down will, like the Energizer Bunny, just keep going and going and going.

I have a hard time disagreeing with skeptics in Congress who want President Obama to outline a strategy to accompany the war powers he seeks over the next three years to fight ISIS. It’s unacceptable to simply grant Obama the powers blindly, with the vague hope that a combination of airstrikes, limited troop engagements and training of non-ISIS rebel forces will be enough to beat back an Islamist force that seems not to have been dramatically dislodged by current military efforts.

Obama should outline a clear strategy of how he will use these powers effectively to force an ISIS retreat and restore some semblance of government or friendly rebel control to the areas ISIS currently occupies. Here are some minimal questions to be answered and conditions that the administration must satisfy:

1. The United States, with some support from allies, already has engaged in a sustained and heavy air campaign against ISIS. There should be an honest assessment of whether or how much this campaign has degraded ISIS capabilities. It’s fairly clear that ISIS has halted its rapid advance, but it doesn’t appear to be ceding control of major areas its forces occupied last year.

2. Since airstrikes alone won’t do the job, as the Obama administration acknowledges, then what is the objective for any engagement by ground forces? Will they serve mainly as spotters for more airstrikes? Will they actively engage in combat against ISIS forces? And if it’s the latter, as is likely, are there adequate contingency plans in place to avoid another Black Hawk Down scenario? Is this nation prepared for the potential capture of U.S. military personnel and to watch them be tortured or beheaded on television?

3. Congress must demand a more-than-symbolic ground-troop commitment from Arab countries that neighbor the fighting zone. We cannot accept another situation where the United States does all of the fighting and dying, while the Arab world observes and then casts judgment when things go wrong. (And they will go wrong.) The Arab nations whose existence is most seriously threatened by ISIS must put up the ground forces to demonstrate their sincere commitment to defeating ISIS. And their ground-forces plan must be included in the Obama administration’s overall strategy.

4. It is not enough to defeat ISIS. There must be a plan to fill the void afterward. Leaving military voids for other, yet-undefined forces to occupy is a formula for future disasters.

Anyone who argues that this isn’t America’s fight, or that there’s no military solution to defeating ISIS, is living in la-la land. ISIS has made clear that it regards this engagement as a no-negotiation fight to the death. And even if there were an opening for negotiations to avert war, what would be the terms? Establishment of a radical islamic state straddling Syria and Iraq? Complete submission of the people under occupation to slaughter and torture or unquestioning conversion to the most radical interpretation of Islam on the planet?

Congress should give Obama the war powers he seeks, but only after getting clarifications and commitments on what this entails. No more open-ended “war on terrorism” powers. This should be a specific authorization for a specific mission. We know the enemy. We know the dangers of failing to confront this enemy. Now, the job of Congress and the administration is to define that mission and the strategy for achieving success.

In this May 24, 2011 file photo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walks with House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio on Capitol Hill in Washington. Israel’s ambassador to the US has gotten an earful from a half-dozen House Democrats angered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s acceptance of a Republican invitation to address Congress next month. Boehner’s invitation came with the Obama administration in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. Boehner’s move has angered the White House and Democrats.

Now comes spin time. After the disastrous handling of House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress, his supporters seem to be trying to rewrite the timeline to put the best possible face on it. The bottom line remains the same: Netanyahu should postpone his trip until after Israeli elections on March 17. Period.

Some Democrats in Congress are signaling that they won’t attend Netanyahu’s speech. They are fully within their right, given that the speech is clearly timed to influence Israeli voters ahead of an election in which Netanyahu is fighting to hold onto his office. It’s inappropriate and an abuse of his office for him to use this trip for personal political advantage. It’s even more inappropriate for Boehner to hand over his dais for this purpose.

Vice President Joe Biden, who normally would sit with Boehner on the speaker’s dais because Biden holds the dual title of president of the Senate, has said he will not be attending Netanyahu’s speech because of a prior commitment. Democrats and Republicans would be even more justified in boycotting the speech for the ham-handed way the invitation was extended — specifically circumventing the White House, with the active collusion of Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer.

By some people’s standards, the mere fact that I’m pointing all this out could earn me the label of being anti-Israel and anti-American. Mort Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, apparently believes that we are required in this country to support Netanyahu no matter what. “We will, of course, be publicly condemning any Democrats who don’t show up for the speech—unless they have a doctor’s note,” he was quoted by Politico as saying. “It’s really an anti-American, anti-patriotic position to take.”

I’m surprised he didn’t add anti-Semitic to the list, because that’s certainly what he’s implying. To be critical of Netanyahu and his bulldozer style of politicking for Israel’s extreme hard right is in no way the equivalent of being anti-patriotic, anti-American or anti-Israel. Netanyahu represents a minority percentage of Israeli voters. He cannot hold together a government without crafting an uncomfortable coalition with smaller parties who are even less representative of the Israeli majority than is Netanyahu.

But don’t take my word for it. Abe Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, also believes Netanyahu should stay home. He told The Jewish Daily Forward:

“It’s a tragedy of unintended consequences” that has “turned the whole thing into a circus.” (The “whole thing” being the very serious subject of Netanyahu’s speech: the Obama administration’s efforts to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran.)

“One needs to restart, and it needs a mature adult statement that this was not what we intended.” Given the fact that Netanyahu’s visit “has been hijacked by politics” Foxman said, “Now is a time to recalibrate, restart and find a new platform and new timing to take away the distractions.”

Israeli politicians also have spoken out against the speech and urged Netanyahu to cancel, including Zionist Camp co-leader Isaac Herzog. According to Haaretz, Herzog said at a conference in Munich that the planned speech “endangers the citizens of Israel and the special relationship between Israel and the U.S. … With all respect for his [election] campaign, Netanyahu must act as an Israeli patriot and not throw Israel’s security under the wheels of the elections bus,” Herzog said.

Haaretz also reported last week that Israeli consuls general around the United States are growing nervous. “A senior Foreign Ministry official said the consuls general in San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia have sent the ministry worried cables in the past two weeks about widespread dissatisfaction regarding Netanyahu’s speech,” the newspaper reported.

Israel’s consul general in Philadelphia, Yaron Sidemen, was particularly pointed in a cable to the Foreign Ministry about where responsibility rests for the way this has been mishandled. Citing reactions he’s received from members of both parties and from Jews and non-Jews, Haaretz quoted him as saying: “The criticism is aimed mainly toward three [officials]: the prime minister, who is seen as treating the U.S. president with insensitivity and disrespect, House Majority Leader John Boehner and Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer.”

“The speech is seen by them as sticking a finger in the eye of the president and the administration,” he added.

In the past three years, I’ve yet to hear Netanyahu veer markedly from his standard talking points about the dangers of Iran obtaining a nuclear-weapons capability. He gave a speech to Congress in 2011 outlining his concerns. Why Congress needs to hear him repeat those concerns is beyond me. We all get it by now. There are really only two options to address the problem: You either negotiate a solution, or you impose a military solution.

Unless Netanyahu is willing to accept all of the enormous — disastrous — consequences of the military approach to disarming Iran, he must accept that all diplomatic routes must be exhausted first. And that is exactly what is happening now. An attack on Iran would unleash a chain reaction of bloodshed perhaps unlike anything we’ve witnessed in the Middle East in decades.

If Netanyahu accepts that heavy sanctions combined with negotiations are the answer, then he’s got to allow the process to unfold without interference. Speaking before Congress at this time is exactly the kind of counterproductive interference this process least needs. Mr. Prime Minister, heed the advice of the wise people who are warning you: Postpone your speech and tone it down a few notches.

Cubans have enjoyed disproportional political influence and outsized preference in U.S. immigration law as a result of Cold War tensions and a desire by the United States to make a political statement about the Castro regime’s oppression of its people. There was a time when preferential treatment to Cuba self-exiles made sense, given their legitimate claims to political asylum.

Today, however, the bulk of Cubans fleeing their homeland are doing so for no reason other than the same one that drives Haitians, Mexicans, Hondurans or Salvadorans to our shores and land borders: a quest to escape poverty. And, on that scale, Cubans are a distinct minority who do not deserve the continued preferential treatment they enjoy. In terms of abject poverty, Haitians have everyone beat, hands down. But if Haitians arrive here by boat, they are treated like anyone captured crossing the Rio Grande: They are treated as illegal immigrants. If a Cuban touches a toe on U.S. soil, he or she gains instant legal status, qualifies for permanent residency after one year, and is eligible for U.S. citizenship in five years.

Cubans’ political status is disproportionate because they constitute a minute proportion of all immigrants coming to the United States, but no other migrant group receives the preferential treatment Cubans receive. Mexicans, by a factor of a zillion, outnumber Cuban migrants. And given the amount of drug-trafficking violence they face in their country compared to the dull political oppression Cubans face under the Castro brothers’ regime, logic would dictate that Mexicans have a far greater need for preferential treatment under U.S. immigration law.

But no. Cubans enjoy this lopsided special treatment because of the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act. And now, according to The New York Times, hard-line conservative Cubans in the United States are joining other critics in calling for the law’s repeal. They point to widespread abuses of the law, which include Cubans who “flee” to the United States and, once they gain their special status, begin traveling back and forth to Cuba with reckless abandon.

If they were so oppressed and persecuted in Cuba, why are they all of a sudden heading back home? Because they’ve found a way to make money off the U.S. system, many through criminal enterprises.

It’s time for Congress to come up with a more equitable law that distinguishes Cuban political asylum seekers from mere economic refugees by forcing all Cuban migrants to submit to the same immigration court system that other migrants must appear before when having to justify their presence here.

Among those expressing skepticism with the Cuban Adjustment Act are: GOP Rep. Carlos Curbelo and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, and Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, a Democrat. The Miami-Dade County Commission also voted unanimously to ask Congress to change or abolish the law.

“I think the law should be eliminated,” Bruno Barreiro, the commissioner who sponsored the resolution, told The Times. “How can someone claim to be politically persecuted, have a special path to residency and citizenship, and a year and a day after being here travel back to Cuba?”

Adds Marc. R. Rosenblum, of the Migration Policy Institute: “At a time when we are working so hard to send back Central Americans who are fleeing levels of persecution at least similar to what happens in Cuba, that double standard will definitely be looked at.”

He’s right. The current law establishes a double standard that has little or no basis for continued existence.

“I can’t find an example of any previous Israeli government whose prime minister, on the eve of elections, made a cynical attempt to use relations between Israel and the United States as a party advertisement.”

Indeed! Whoever in the Israeli political establishment who uttered those words is spot on in my book. You just don’t use a trip to any foreign country, especially the capital of Israel’s top ally, as a ploy to win votes before a tight election. And no self-respecting U.S. president would allow the auspices of an official visit to be used this way.

That’s why President Obama was absolutely correct to refuse to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in early March when he comes to address Congress, by invitation of the Republican leadership and without any prior consultation with the White House. Obama has absolutely no reason whatsoever to meet with Netanyahu under those circumstances.

Netanyahu is increasingly unpopular in his own country. His Likud party is struggling in second place ahead of March parliamentary elections behind the opposition Labor Party, in large part because Israelis are fed up with Netanyahu’s hawkish, scaremongering tactics. There’s not a doubt in my mind that Netanyahu wants to use this U.S. trip to bolster his party right before the election.

There’s also not a doubt in my mind that House Speaker John Boehner is doing this to bolster Netanyahu’s standing before the elections and to grandstand against Obama’s nuclear negotiations with Iran. Because we already know, having heard it dozens of times before, exactly what Netanyahu is going to say about Iran during this trip. He has nothing new to say. And he cannot tell Congress anything more relevant than what Congress could hear in briefings from CIA and NSA chiefs. This is 100 percent showmanship.

What Boehner wants is to tweak Obama. What Netanyahu wants is to tweak Obama. This is nothing more than a cynical ploy, of zero value in terms of improving national security or boosting Congress’s understanding of the dangers posed by a nuclear-armed Iran.

Oh, by the way, the person who uttered those words at the top? That was Benjamin Netanyahu, according to the Associated Press, speaking in 1996 ahead of a planned visit by then-Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

President Barack Obama will unveil a series of proposals to aid the middle class during the State of the Union address.

What I find so infuriating about State of the Union addresses during the Obama administration is that I can count on good ideas, bad ideas and mediocre ideas going nowhere in Congress. I blame the GOP for some of that, but the president is far from blameless., too.

Tonight, the president will call for an increased inheritance tax, two free years of community college, tax hikes on the wealthy and tax cuts for middle class folks. These and other measures, such as hiking capital gains taxes, imposing fees on large financial firms, are supposed to raise $320 billion to help the middle class. In other words, the revenue generated from those changes would pay for new tax credits and other cost-saving measures for middle-class taxpayers.

The president needs to couch these proposals in the context of a broader tax reform. The problem is by posturing this as a Robin Hood tactic, I fear he will strike the sort of confrontational tone that is aimed at setting the agenda for the 2016 presidential nominees and not produce meaningful change for middle class families now.

Case in point: taxes on the wealthy and cuts to middle class. Here’s the problem. The tone is class warfare, and a sure-to-fail attempt at income transfer. Instead he should be focusing on finding consensus on more comprehensive tax reform and job-creating policies that will force Republicans and Democrats to have political skin in the game. Short-term tax shifts do not equal tax reform. These simply pile another layer of complexity onto a tax code that is already too complex.

Moreover, it is hard to imagine that a GOP-led Congress will suddenly compromise on their long-standing efforts to lower or eliminate the capital gains tax and end taxes on estates, not expand them. Unless of course, the President can find a reason for folks like Paul Ryan, to support some of these measures — in exchange for a comprehensive individual and corporate tax reform.

Obama doesn’t have much time left, but it seems to me that he is about to use it to draw political distinctions between the two parties in advance of the 2016 elections. And unless forced to do otherwise, House and Senate Republicans and Democrats are more than willing to play that game, which will do nothing to ease the woes of middle class Americans.

I am going to miss the arch-conservative, arch-patriot, arch-egotist character that Stephen Colbert constructed on his Comedy Central show. Last night, that character said goodnight for good as Stephen Colbert, the comedian and actor, prepares to start a new gig as David Letterman’s replacement on The Late Show. Colbert’s character will live forever, thanks to a fight that developed on screen last night between Colbert and the Angel of Death. Colbert cheated Death, and after they tried to strangle each other, Colbert pulled out a gun and shot Death to death, thus achieving immortality along with Alex Trebeck, Abraham Lincoln and Santa.

Aside from the amazing feat Colbert accomplished four nights a week, making Americans laugh about how seriously we take ourselves, he accomplished something rare in television by assembling a choir at the end of his show consisting of some of the most powerful and influential people in the world. Watch this video and see how many you can identify.

To assemble this many notables at the same time, pretty much in the same place, required amazing engineering by Colbert and his staff. What a tribute to a fake guy who single-handedly saved the Olympics, saved Ben and Jerry’s, advocated for truthiness, combatted ignorance with wit and, really, helped save America from itself.

I was shocked back in 2007 when I posted an item on this blog about Colbert, and when I was looking through comments later in the day, lo and behold, Stephen Colbert had posted a response. I’m proud to have been a part of the Colbert Nation. We’ll meet again.

Jeb Bush announced that he had consulted his family and decided to explore a bid for the White House.

The technology industry is the champion of the pre-announcement. That’s when rumors — or even a direct company hint — circulate that Company A will introduce its new super-duper widget in a few months. Suddenly, any consumer in the market for any kind of widget is frozen. After all, who wants to buy a widget when a super-duper widget could be coming out soon?

Except, no one knows what a few months means — one month, two or twelve? Or even that the widget will be super-duper. In the interim, Companies B, C and D have a hard time breaking through the pre-announcement ice jam.

That game also is played in politics. Hillary Clinton hasn’t announced that she’ll run for president in 2016, but has effectively frozen the field of possible Democrat challengers. No one wants to get out ahead of her and suddenly find themselves without money or a base. The same dynamic is true on the GOP side. Jeb Bush has been a wild card.

Well today, Bush’s pre-announcement tweet that he is exploring a run in 2016 accomplishes the same end. It slows down anyone who wants to run from the party’s political middle and, more to the point, controls fund-raising. It even puts a guy like Mitt Romney on hold and might take even the steam out of a Rand Paul, Marco Rubio,Chris Christie or Rick Perry. As for Ted Cruz, who knows what he might do. I believe most Republicans don’t think Cruz is electable, and the party certainly doesn’t want a return to the chaotic Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Jon Huntsman (am I missing anybody?) primary season free-for-all.

In this June 6, 2012, House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, accompanied by Sen. Mitch McConnell of Ky., right, gestures during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. The GOP's election victory Tuesday places them in an undisputed leadership position, which means that they can no longer simply blame the Democrats for the nation's problems. They have to come up with solutions, especially regarding immigration.

After six years of GOP politicians hammering President Barack Obama on immigration, there’s no longer any argument about whose job it is to solve the problem. GOP politicians from Texas to Washington have insisted for years that they cannot address other aspects of immigration reform until the border is secure.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has led the charge on this front. Texas state Sen. Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor-elect, suggested in campaign ads that his opponent in Tuesday’s election was somehow comfortable letting thousands of illegal immigrants and ISIS — yes ISIS — into our country because of what he claimed were her lax measures on border security. The GOP has done nothing but blame the Democrats for the state of our border. And they successfully portrayed this as one of the top, if not the top, national security issues.

If that’s the case, then certainly it’s a top agenda item for the Republican leadership to tackle when they take control in January. So let’s turn to the immigration solutions offered in the agenda outlined in today’s Wall Street Journal by Sen. Mitch McConnell, the likely Senate majority leader, and House Speaker John Boehner. Hmm, the list their top priorities as: repeal Obamacare, authorize construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, push the Hire More Heroes veterans-employment act, promote innovative charter schools. As they write in the Journal, they also plan to address:

• The insanely complex tax code that is driving American jobs overseas;

• Health costs that continue to rise under a hopelessly flawed law that Americans have never supported;

• A savage global terrorist threat that seeks to wage war on every American;

• An education system that denies choice to parents and denies a good education to too many children;

• Excessive regulations and frivolous lawsuits that are driving up costs for families and preventing the economy from growing;

• An antiquated government bureaucracy ill-equipped to serve a citizenry facing 21st-century challenges, from disease control to caring for veterans;

• A national debt that has Americans stealing from their children and grandchildren, robbing them of benefits that they will never see and leaving them with burdens that will be nearly impossible to repay.

Sounds ambitious. But, amazingly, they seem to have overlooked immigration and border security. This enormously huge crisis affecting our southern border — the one that Democrats were so lax in dealing with and that only Republicans were capable of addressing head on because of Ebola and ISIS and the implications for the survival of our nation — is nowhere to be found in the McConnell-Boehner agenda.

Sorry guys, you don’t get off that easily. You are required to come up with a border security plan. Your legislation also must address: increased funding for border security, increased hiring of thousands of border patrol officers, increased funding for detention facilities, increased funding for immigration courts to reduce the current backlog of tens of thousands of cases. And you must do this now because this is one of the top scare-tactic issues that GOP candidates used to win this election.

The next two years are going to be very exciting. The pressure is off for Democrats. The Republicans will now be in control of both the House and Senate, which means the weight of the world rests on the shoulders of soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner.

The Democratic minority will be the least of their problems for the next two years. They now must identify whatever it is that a fickle American electorate wants to see and deliver something those voters can embrace as a form of action that moves the country forward. Apparently, a vastly improved economy, rising employment and, yes, a dramatically tightened southern border are not the answer. Americans want more of something, but it’s not quite clear what. All they know is that they think the Republicans can do it better than the Democrats, which means the onus is now on the GOP to deliver.

This means actual legislation, as opposed to what they’ve spent the past six years doing, which is saying no to everything the Democrats proposed. That tactic won’t work anymore. They are in the hot seat, and they’re the ones who have to make voters happy. Good luck with that.

Standing in their way will not be Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid. It’ll be our own Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who still seems to think that No is still the answer to every question. Cruz will try to block anything that smacks of immigration reform. Cruz will try to block anything that smacks of capitulation to Obamacare. Cruz will be the wrecking ball at the Republican Party’s party.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Cruz repeatedly last night whether he would commit to supporting McConnell as majority leader — just supporting his election to the position, not necessarily embracing McConnell’s agenda — and Cruz again spouted his favorite word: No. I’m pretty sure the only way to get this guy to say the word “yes” is to ask him whether Ted Cruz is the most brilliant politician ever to work in Washington.

Finally, we are at the moment of decision for America. If the country truly wants to go the Ted Cruz route of wrecking-ball extremism, the next two years will decide that. But since only about a third of Americans actually took the trouble to vote this time, this is hardly a representative sample of support for the Cruz agenda.

And since only a fraction of the winners on Tuesday night embrace Cruz’s politics, it’s doubtful that his agenda will get anywhere in Washington. Which means that the big fight ahead will be the Ted Cruz wrecking ball faction against the rest of Republicans who actually want to get their presidential and legislative candidates elected in 2016.

Democrats pretty much just have to sit back and enjoy the show for now as they watch the Republicans try to deliver while their fellow Republicans try to stop them.

President Barack Obama chairs a special meeting of the U.N. security council during the 69th Session of the U.N. General Assembly. (AFP PHOTO / Timothy A. Clary)

Are the U.S. airstrikes in Syria legal? That was a question tackled on a great “All Things Considered” segment Friday in an interview with Noah Feldman.

Feldman, an international law professor at Harvard and a columnist at Bloomberg View, is one of many experts saying, no, the Obama administration does not have any credible legal authorization for the strikes.

The administration is relying on the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed by the Bush administration in 2001. Not good, says Feldman:

“The post-9/11 authorization was for us to go to war with al-Qaida or affiliated forces. The Islamic State is not an affiliated force of al-Qaida and, in fact, the Islamic State it is at war with an al-Qaida affiliate in Syria. And it would be a mistake to interpret that initial authorization as simply saying if someone is a jihadist and we don’t like them then the president is authorized to make war on them. That’s a bit too close to the old, refuted idea that the United States is involved in a global war against radical Islam; we’re not as a legal matter, and we shouldn’t be as a practical matter either.”

And let us not forget that this is the same Authorization for Use of Military Force that the administration was talking about repealing as recently as January:

“The Iraq AUMF is no longer used for any U.S. government activities and we therefore would fully support any move to repeal it,” a senior administration official told Yahoo News. “However, we have not prioritized proactively seeking to repeal it, because the effect would be entirely symbolic and we have many more pressing priorities to take up with Congress.”

Not so “entirely symbolic” now, is it?

The fact is that any serious attempt to defeat the Islamic State will not be a quick air-strike-in-air-strike-out affair. This will drag on for years. Just read last month’s insightful War on the Rocks post, “Don’t BS the American People About Iraq, Syria, and ISIL” for one of the best explanations I’ve read yet. Author Brian Fishman makes clear that if we are going in to Syria, it needs to be with Americans’ eyes wide open:

Advocating the defeat of ISIL over the short-term without acknowledging what will be necessary to achieve that end is a recipe for mission creep. Mission creep is a recipe for policy failure because the American people will not allow sustained investment in a policy they did not commit to originally.

Obama should be seeking formal congressional authorization for this military mission. And Congress should stop abdicating its role by letting Obama sidestep lawmakers. Instead, we’re stuck in a nice game of circular reasoning:

Congress ran full-tilt into election-year gridlock over immigration Thursday and staggered toward a five-week summer break with no agreement in sight on legislation to cope with the influx of unaccompanied children flocking illegally into the United States.

Hurry up and go home seems to be the way Congress has decided to deal with the border crisis of unaccompanied children.

How many voices did we hear from in the past month – both democrats and republicans in Congress – that the inflow of unaccompanied minors was a crisis? Usually a crisis means that attempting a solution jumps to the top of your “to-do” list and it’s all hands on deck to find a timely remedy. Not so with the most polarized Congress that most us can remember. The solution is to go on vacation, or back to the home district to tout legislative accomplishments. How laughable is that?

Yesterday, Sen. Ted Cruz became the villain on the House side for tossing a monkey wrench into a House measure and yet again undercutting House Speaker John Boehner’s influence in a body that Cruz isn’t even a member. And on the Senate side, Majority Leader Harry Reid shared obstructionist honors by pushing a comprehensive immigration package that he knew had no chance of becoming law. A truly bipartisan and bicameral gumming up of the works.

Did Boehner’s bill have a chance in the Senate. No. And did Reid’s bill have a chance in the House? No. Finding a solution was not on anyone’s agenda. Boehner was on pace to make a big show of Senate inaction, only to have Cruz cut deeper into Boehner’s influence. And Reid was posturing for show.

Post navigation

The Dallas Morning News Editorial Board was the first editorial board in the nation to use a blog to openly discuss hot topics and issues among its members and with readers. Our intent is to pull back the curtain on the daily process of producing the unsigned editorials that reflect the opinion of the newspaper, and to share analysis and opinion on issues of interest to board members and invited guest bloggers.